Hardartery wrote: ↑Mon Nov 07, 2022 3:56 pm
Jordan made perfect sense, to me. Any set taken to failure or closr to failure is by definition high intensity, it just takes a lot of reps to get there. It's more effecient to push lower reps and go to 4-5 RIR, it achieves the same level of overall intensity in a more effecient way, and likely leads to greater cross connection in the fibres that lead to greater cross-sectional size. Cross sectional size being different than simply "Size", which can be achieved through production of additional muscle cells but the literature that I have read doesn't seem to equate that to cross-sectional size gains. That doesn't make a lot of sense on it's face, but in practice you are going to gain strength at a much greater rate through the cross-connection of muscle tissues than you can by producing new muscle fibres. It makes for a denser muscle as well. Jordan seems consitant in saying that going to 4-5 RIR at any of the rep ranges mentioned would be the same result, which I honestly doubt but there may be some studies indicating that to be at least a realistic possibility. He also mentioned several times that one set on it's own cannot be considered outside of the context of the overall volume of the workout.
That's the thing, he said two sets of different reps, but both done to 4-5 RIR are equally stimulating, but then also goes on to say that even doing sets at 10RIR could be the same as 4-5RIR at equal volumes. This seems contradictory to me.
The question is not efficiency of training, but rather what constitutes hypertrophic stimulus.
dw wrote: ↑Mon Nov 07, 2022 4:09 pm
I'm not sure I understand the effective reps theory but I think it involves two premises: that metabolic stress is necessary for hypertrophy and that hypertrophy scales pretty linearly with metabolic stress. Therefore in a set taken to failure only the reps that are sufficiently stressful metabolically (say RPE 7-10) contribute to hypertrophy, and of those the later reps are substantially more effective than the earlier.
I think the more current theory is that metabolic stress is more of a threshold that needs to be crossed to *maximize* per set hypertrophic stimulus, not to achieve any hypertrophic stimulus at all, nor to maximize per workout stimulus (e.g. Montana Method).
This refinement has two consequences: you can achieve hypertrophy through mechanical stress alone, it's just not efficient per set. (E.g. Montana method not adapted to stress hypertrophy.) And second, because it is more a threshold than a linear driver of hypertrophy, sets at say RPE 6 might be equally stimulative to sets at RPE 8.
The latter premise has a very practical consequence for programming imo, in that if true you should aim for your sets across (before the final set) to be well away from RPE 10 so that you can maximize mechanical stress (i.e. total reps) without having to take long rest periods. Whereas if you hit RPE 10 with several sets to go you will lose a lot of reps as you start failing your rep target.
And this kind of gets to the crux of it: if some threshold needs to be reached, what does it say about the reps preceding it? In other words, if for a set of 5 you need it to be at least, say RPE 5 to be considered effective, what happens if it is RPE 4 or less? I understand it is not a perfectly precise cutoff, but generally speaking, if we say you need to hit RPE 5-ish, what, generally speaking, do reps below RPE 5 do? It would imply they are junk volume. If they are not junk volume, and they are indeed stimulating, then why do we need to hit RPE 5? Why not just do sets across at RPE 2, for example, and achieve similar results with a lot less effort?
In one of the examples, where I think Jordan is at least consistent, he agrees that a set of 5 with a 10RM weight would be equivalent to a set of 25 with a 30RM weight. Why is that the case? What are reps 1-4, or 1-24 in terms of stimulus? Again, if they are useful because volume, then why does it matter if we hit RPE 5+? And if they are not useful, then we are back to effective reps theory*.
Also, this poses questions about the reps following the threshold rep. If RPE 5 means stimulus reached, and the reps following that are not driving more stimulus, just more fatigue, why is the RPE 5 rep stimulating, and the RPE 6+ reps not? Do muscles only respond to the first rep of increased mechanical tension, but not the following ones in the same set? Is a single at RPE 5 equally stimulating as a triple at RPE 7, or a set of five at RPE 9? Again, doesn't make sense to me.
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* My understand is that the effective reps theory states that only reps that achieve an involuntary reduction in contractile velocity are considered effective. This tends to occur with RPE 5+ ish work. Each rep above 5+ is considered effective, so a set at RPE 8 has about 3-4 effective reps, and a set at RPE 5 has about 1 effective rep. The idea is that, based on fatigue, you can either go hard for very few sets, or go easier for more sets to achieve the same stimulus.